Archive for April, 2010

Reid and I took advantage of the warm weather of Tuesday to eat in our backyard. I’m not sure if the fresh air inspired her, but Reid chose the middle of supper to tell me about some of her favourite things:

Favourite food: chicken curry (Madras)
Favourite sport: soccer
Favourite toy: basketball, which she doesn’t own but plays at daycare in the courtyard or so she said
Favourite sleepy toy: Princess
Favourite thing she likes to do: sew, also at daycare

As Reid and I were eating breakfast this morning, she inspected the dried cranberries, blueberries and cherries mix I put on my Red River cereal. She wasn’t interested in the dried fruit, though, and asked for “the not dried kind of cherries”. I said we’d put them on the grocery list. Reid got a thoughtful look on her face and asked if we had any “of those frozen things that I like.” I told her – not surprisingly – that I didn’t know what she meant. Reid was more precise. “You know the things I like and Daddy doesn’t. They’re kind of like a wrapped present,” and she smiled a sweet smile as she remembered. I had a flash of insight and asked, “Do you mean brussel sprouts?” Reid grinned and said, “Yes!” I had to admit that I don’t think we have any in our freezer. She wasn’t happy with waiting for the weekend, or even until Wednesday evening when we don’t have an activity, and asked if couldn’t I go at lunch. That’s a lot of love for brussel sprouts, which I like but had never thought that they looked like wrapped presents. I should probably suggest that line to the Brussel Sprout Marketing Board or some such organization.

B, the boy from 2 doors down, came to the car as I pulled into the driveway a couple of days ago. He is 3 or 4 years older than Reid and speaks only a little English but he and Reid manage to play fairly well together. Though Reid has been learning French, she doesn’t speak in front of me, though she does understand what B and I say to one another. In any case, Reid and B were playing on the driveway while I unloaded the car and started supper. Reid appeared to say that she was “making an experiment” and need a knife, “but don’t worry, a butter knife will work”, a plastic glass, strainer and a cookie tray. I talked her into an old cake pan and she went back outside to conduct her experiment. I was called out to see the results shortly thereafter. It turns out if you mix flakes of sidewalk chalk and bubble juice in a rusty cake pan, you get a grayish-brown liquid. I should have asked Reid if her hypothesis had predicted that outcome.

Something about the liquid made Reid think about how a sugar bush works. She explained to me about collecting sap from a tree (in our case, a whirly-gig flower we were imagining was a tree), putting it in a pan over a fire and boiling it down and then pouring out maple syrup. I guess that she *does* remember something from daycare or school despite daily declarations of “I don’t remember” when I ask her about her day.

Reid’s swimming teacher is doing a great job challenging her tonight. Reid swam the length of the pool on her back unassisted and then swam back, with some help to breathe, on her front.

The teacher demonstrated the proper way to dive from one knee and Reid came thisclose to executing but, in the end, did a slight, low-altitude belly flop. The teacher showed how to do a dive from standing and Reid did an impressive belly-flop. It had altitude, a great hang time and an amazing splash. The teacher said that she’d been worried about Reid’s tummy but Reid was proud with no thought of pain. I’m wondering if Reid will go to sleep early tonight with all of the exercise. It tends not to happen that way for us, though.